The present invention generally relates to a printing apparatus, and more particularly to a printing apparatus with manual sheet feeding and document reading capabilities in which a printing mode and a document reading mode are carried out independently.
Recently, a desk-top publishing (DTP) system has been proposed as a system for providing a simple, useful image forming and bookbinding tool for users. In order to provide such a tool, it is necessary to combine at least a computer with image forming and editing capabilities, a recording unit (such as a printer) for recording a finalized image on a sheet of paper, and a reading unit (such as a document reader) for optically scanning a document to read image information from the document. The image information read by the reading unit is composed of, for example, graphic images such as graphic charts or tables. By means of the DTP system mentioned above, it is possible to print an image in which such graphic images from the reading unit are incorporated in the image recorded by the recording unit. However, the above mentioned system is inconvenient to users in some ways. For example, complicated operations are required to form a desired image by combining the graphic images from the reading unit with the image recorded by the recording unit. Also, it is likely that a document set at the reading unit for performing the document reading mode will be erroneously transported to the recording unit. Further, when the recording unit malfunctions or is still in a warm-up condition, it is impossible to start the document reading mode in which a document is optically scanned by the reading unit. In addition, the DTP system including the computer, the printer and the scanner has a complicated and bulky structure, and thus the cost of manufacturing the system is high.